Last week I had the pleasure of attending several speaking sessions and panels at Social Media Week in NYC. While many of the sessions I wanted to attend were full, I was able to catch a few good (and not as good) ones including:

While you can watch some of the sessions via livestream, I wanted to share a few bite-sized nuggets of wisdom from the sessions below.

On Community:

  • Collaboration is the ultimate business weapon
  • Having staff involved in the community builds trust and authenticity i.e. comments on user’s posts, etc.
  • Think of FB and Twitter as ways to support the community and then go to offline events
  • You can get better engagement by asking members to give opinion than from contests or promotions
  • Find innovators within your community and leverage their experience and expertise
  • The brand doesn’t shape people, people shape the brand. For example, people shaped Netflix and made them change their business model
  • Give your customers the tools content to shape your business
  • Can’t ask something of community without giving them something
  • Be where customer is most comfortable

On Content:

  • Don’t use the same strategy for each channel, find out what you’re  trying to accomplish first
  • Not every piece of content should go on every platform
  • Create different content for different people
  • Co-create with fans, followers and customers
  • Make the brand a vessel for creative consumers
  • Nokia invites user generated content to feature on the site and credits the creator
  • People tell us what content matters
  • Content that gets no engagement is not content
  • Put people at the center of your content and messaging
  • Provide educational content for more sales success ie free classes at Home Depot, tutorials on Vimeo
  • Mastercard uses Percolate to filter relevant news and create content in a flash

On Emerging Media, Innovation and Trends:

  • When it comes to emerging media, don’t devote a lot of money or people, just play with it and see where it goes
  • Know your audience and how they connect, see what channels they’re active on
  • Ask existing SM communities what they think about new platforms. It can help guide your presence.
  • Have to get out there and try new platforms or will fall behind.
  • While people are writing Twitter policies, you can be signing up for Tumblr and experimenting.
  • Sometimes you will have to ask forgiveness, but don’t let that hold you back.
  • GE has had success sharing photos taken across their global office on Instagram, which translates as being accessible. They debated Pinterest, now they have five pinboards.
  • Social TV and Twitter- tap into community during TV events, such as the grammys, by using a hashtag then follow up on conversations.
  • Connect to the heritage of the brand when innovating and provide an interesting way that’s connected back

On Pinterest:

(Since Pinterest was the cool kid of Social Media Week, it gets its own category)

  • The appeal of Pinterest is that you don’t have to create new content, you’re using existing content
  • Brands like Whole Foods are successful not because they share their own products, but because they share their core values
  • Going back to the original source for pins is something brands should take very seriously. Some brands only pin things that they can give credit to the owner
  • Birchbox’s content strategy for Pinterest is 70 external and 30 internal
  • Vast majority of Pinterest feed is spontaneous. Engaging with customers makes it easy to maintain spontaneity.
  • Brands need to make websites more “pinnable.” Etsy added a “pin it” button that automatically lifts the title and price.